State Secretary van Rij of the Ministry of Finance has cut his losses and devised a mass appeal process for requests for an ex officio reduction in Box 3. But BEWARE! There are still situations in which you must take action yourself to safeguard your rights.
Reduction by the authorities
The issue at stake is whether the Tax and Customs Administration should reduce income tax assessments that have already been finalised as a result of the ruling in which the Supreme Court ruled on 24 December 2021 (the “Christmas ruling”) that the calculation of income from savings and investments (Box 3) is contrary to European law.
These are final tax assessments for which the period for lodging an objection has expired. These assessments can now only be reduced ex officio. The Supreme Court ruled on 20 May 2022 has ruled that, following the Kerstar judgement, the government is not obliged to reduce these tax assessments of its own accord. Legal experts, however, still see grounds for such a reduction, which were not addressed in the aforementioned judgement. These arguments will, of course, be put before the tax court.
In order to benefit from a positive outcome, hundreds of thousands of requests for an ex officio reduction will be submitted. Van Rij is now set to enshrine in law that the special rules for mass objections will apply to these requests. This will make processing and settlement by the Tax and Customs Administration considerably less labour-intensive. The scheme proposed by Van Rij also means that every taxpayer affected by this issue will benefit from a favourable decision, including those who have not submitted a request (or have not done so in time). For many taxpayers, this will therefore mean that it will not be necessary to submit requests for an ex officio reduction.
A request, after all
The disadvantage of a collective procedure is that individual arguments cannot be raised within it. Anyone who believes that their individual situation is so dire that a request for an ex officio reduction is nevertheless warranted would therefore be well advised to submit such a request in good time, explicitly stating that they wish to put forward other arguments, other than those under discussion in the mass procedure. It goes without saying that such individual requests will need to be substantiated in a specific and detailed manner and that this may also need to be followed by proceedings before the tax court.
PLEASE NOTE: Lodge an objection to new tax assessments in good time!
If you receive your new final tax assessments, which include income from savings and investments, you MUST safeguard your rights by lodging a (pro forma) objection within 6 weeks of the date of that assessment. The mass objection procedure will also be declared applicable to these objections. However, a favourable outcome of that procedure will NOT apply to taxpayers who have not lodged an objection (or have lodged it too late) against their tax assessment.